Pilot Project at Michigan Tech Leads to Federal Regulation Changes

By Jennifer Donovan, Director of News & Media Relations
University Marketing & Communications
Michigan Technological University

Michigan Technological University participated in a national pilot project that helped the federal government revise its regulations to make a major reduction in the number of federal certification forms and the administrative follow-up paperwork on federal research grants.

Michigan Tech’s Board of Trustees were told about the pilot project and the regulations changes at their regular Board meeting Friday, March 3.

Michigan Tech and three other universities—George Mason, the University of California-Irvine and the University of California-Riverside—participated in a pilot project designed to develop an alternative method for certifying labor expended on federally funded projects. Julie Seppala, vice president for finance, and Tammy LaBissioniere, director of sponsored programs accounting, led the pilot program at Tech.

Using the new method, Michigan Tech was able to reduce the number of certification forms from 7,000 to 700 a year and the number of administrative follow-up forms from 3,500 to 35 a year.  Based on the results of the pilot, the US Office of Management and Budget revised federal regulations to allow all institutions to adopt the new method.

For the full report on the Board of Trustees meeting, see http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2017/march/pilot-project-michigan-tech-leads-federal-regulations-changes.html